Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Christchurch-based anti-abortion group Right to Life has rightly taken offence at biased reportage in the Sunday Star-Times.

The first paragraph of the story, by Marika Hill, read: "Anti-abortionists are taking aim at the charity status of the Family Planning Association in their latest assault against women and pro-choice organisations."

The story was a legitimate one about Right to Life's questioning of the FPA's charity status (Right to Life president Ken Orr says the association breached its status by lobbying the government for the decriminalisation of abortion) and there was nothing exceptionable about the neutral headline, Family Planning Association's charity status comes under fire.

What was inexcusable was the phrase "latest assault against women", which introduced blatantly ideological rhetoric into a story masquerading as straight news.

Either the phrase was ideologically motivated or it was extraordinarily sloppy journalism. I suspect the former, since the reporter's previous stories suggest she has been captured by the pro-abortion lobby. Either way, it should never have survived the editing process.

Quite apart from the implicit ideological bias, the reference to an "assault against women" is wildly misleading. It implies that the interests of all women are aligned with those of the Family Planning Association (try telling that to some of the women I know) and comes straight from the feminist propaganda handbook.

I don't know who edits the Sunday Star-Times these days - I get the impression the editor's office has a revolving door - but whoever it is should exercise tighter control over content if he or she values the paper's credibility.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

JOHN CAMPBELL is a very talented
broadcaster and a likeable man. But I believe he is dangerously wrong when he
pooh-poohs the idea of objectivity in journalism, as he did in a recent
interview with this paper’s Your Weekend
magazine.

“I’ve never met a journalist
who didn’t want to change the world and make it a better place,” the TV3
current affairs host was quoted as saying. “Without exception that’s why they
get into journalism. And yet when they get there they are asked to be
dispassionate and objective.

“Who came up with that rule?
It’s stupid.”

In fact that “stupid” rule,
which requires that journalists try to remain impartial, present facts and
opinions in a balanced way and keep their own views to themselves, has underpinned good journalism in Western democracies
for decades.

The importance of objectivity
is recognised, if not always followed to the letter, by virtually all the
world’s great news organisations, including the BBC. It’s also upheld by the
bodies that adjudicate on journalism standards, including our own Broadcasting
Standards Authority and Press Council.

There’s a very good reason
for this. The requirement for balance is a vital check on the potential abuse
of media power. If it were abandoned, journalists would be free to spin the
news however it suited them – in other words, to exclude any inconvenient fact
or opinion that didn’t align with their own world view.

It’s a curious fact that
those who argue that journalistic objectivity should be discarded – a view now
routinely promoted in journalism schools – are almost invariably from the Left
of the political spectrum. Yet the same people are the first to condemn
right-wing news outlets, such as the notorious Fox News, for making little or
no attempt at journalistic balance.

It doesn’t seem to occur to
them that objectivity, or more precisely the absence of it, can cut both ways.

Being objective doesn’t mean,
as is sometimes dishonestly argued, that journalists have to be timid or defer
to those in power. Neither does it prevent them expressing shock and outrage
when faced with obvious atrocities. But it does require reporters to
acknowledge that in most situations there’s more than one side to the story,
and that things are often more complex than they seem on the surface.

There is still a place for
impassioned advocacy journalism of the type Campbell practices, as long as it’s
clear to the viewer or reader that that’s what it is. But as a general
proposition, the abandonment of journalistic objectivity would be disastrous.

* * *

DISILLUSIONED fans who endlessly criticise the Black
Caps and the Phoenix miss the point.

We tend to think of soap opera as a form of television
entertainment, but the human need for melodrama is played out as much on the
sports pages as it is on the television screen.

Just as viewers are addicted to the nightly
cliff-hangers so cleverly devised by the scriptwriters for Coronation Street and Home
and Away, sports fans too must have their daily fix of shock, disbelief,
relief and elation.

This is the real reason why teams such as the Black
Caps and the Phoenix exist: to inject an element of nail-biting uncertainty
into humdrum suburban lives.

The All Blacks fall miserably short in this regard by
consistently winning (although when they do lose, the country makes the most
of it by sinking into bouts of anguished introspection and recrimination that
can last for weeks).

But the Black Caps and the Phoenix intuitively understand
that sport fulfils a much bigger purpose than simply satisfying the urge to
win. That is their unacknowledged brilliance.

They realise their function is to give meaning to
sports fans’ dreary existence by taking them on a roller-coaster emotional
ride, plunging them into the depths of despair with a run of humiliating losses
and then, just when all seems lost, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and
restoring hope.

Ridiculed as no-hopers one day, they always retain the
potential to win the next and be hailed as heroes. People who condemn them for
inconsistency fail to appreciate how dull life would seem if they won all the
time.

In any case, their erratic performance merely mirrors
the fickle emotions of their followers, who can be transformed in the space of
a few hours from howling, vengeful mob to fawning admirers.

This is what sport is really about. Far from
ridiculing the Black Caps and the Phoenix, we should salute them for having
such a clear-eyed view of their real purpose.

* * *

WATCHING TV One’s Breakfast
programme this week (not a habit of mine, but I was on holiday), I noticed a
promotional caption underneath that read: “Rawdon [host Rawdon Christie]
share’s some of his summer holiday antics.”

Surely that should have read “Rawdon share’s some of
his summer holiday antic’s”.I trust the
caption writer has been disciplined.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, January 16.)

The two most-hyped films showing on New Zealand screens this
summer were Skyfall and The Hobbit. I can’t muster the stamina
to sit through all two hours 50 minutes of Peter Jackson’s latest epic (more on
that later), but I did see the new James Bond movie.

I admit I went with an ulterior motive. Several years ago I
had seen Casino Royale, the first
Bond film starring Daniel Craig, and thought it was a stinker. I walked out, as
I often do these days if a film hasn’t hooked me within the first 30 minutes.

I couldn’t understand why so many critics were hailing Craig
as the greatest Bond since Sean Connery. His acting style, if it could be
dignified with that description, was so wooden it would have made a plank look
animated.

I was similarly unimpressed with his one-dimensional
performance in the only other film I have seen him in, a World War II action
drama called Defiance, in which he
played a Jewish resistance fighter.

But the release of Skyfall
saw Craig again being lauded by the critics, some of whom even suggested he had
now seized Connery’s mantle as the greatest Bond ever.So I went along to check him out again,
expecting to be as unimpressed as I had been with Casino Royale. After all, there are few things more satisfying than
having one’s prejudices confirmed.

I wasn’t prepared for what began to unfold on screen. The
first half-hour of Skyfall is a
cinematic tour de force. From the spellbinding title credits (featuring Adele’s
theme song, arguably the best Bond tune since Nancy Sinatra sang You Only Live Twice in 1967) through the
obligatory opening high-speed chase, I was swept along on an exhilarating ride
that reminded me of those memorable action sequences in the original Indiana
Jones films.

It was superbly filmed and brilliantly edited. If any Bond
film has produced a better opening pursuit, I haven’t seen it.

What’s more, I found myself warming to Craig, who seemed
less of an automaton than in his first outing in the role. He even showed
traces of the trademark humour familiar from earlier Bonds.

But sadly (and you must have known there was a “but”
coming), that first 30 minutes or so represented the best of the film. What
followed was formulaic Bond stuff – much of it highly implausible, as you’d
expect, but entertaining enough: exotic locations, beautiful but untrustworthy
women and, of course, an evil and fiendishly clever mastermind (played by
Javier Bardem, whom many will recall as the icily efficient assassin in the
Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men).

Had the director of Skyfall
(Englishman Sam Mendes) called it quits after, say, 110 minutes, he might have
had a respectable film – not a great film, but a respectable one, given the
limitations of the genre. The action scenes were done well enough to take your
mind off the plot, which grew sillier as it went on.

But just when I expected the film to neatly resolve itself,
it lurched into a ludicrous, drawn-out climactic sequence that gave the
impression of having been tacked on as an afterthought. If the first half-hour
of Skyfall is as good as Bond films
get, the last half-hour is preposterously, tediously bad.

It sees Bond and his boss, M, implausibly lead the villain
and his gang of cardboard-cutout henchmen to a remote, abandoned Scottish
mansion – the Skyfall of the title – where Bond had spent his childhood. There
Bond is reunited with the faithful old family gamekeeper, played by Albert
Finney, and together the three of them make a stand against the bad guys
(although why they didn’t just call in British security forces to do the job
isn’t explained).

I was going to describe Finney as a distinguished actor but
it should really be “formerly distinguished”, since the 70-something thespian
may not live long enough for his reputation to recover from this load of hokum.
His performance is risibly bad and you can only wonder what possessed him to
accept the part. He surely doesn’t need the moolah.

Bardem too will have some way to go to regain the respect he
previously enjoyed as a serious actor, but at least he has time on his side. In
Skyfall he plays a pantomime villain,
more comical than scary.

Having said all that, I accept that if I had a chosen a
career as a film director, I would have been a wretched failure. Films that I
think are absurd
show how out of touch I am with public taste. Skyfall is already one of the most
successful releases ever.

Avatar, which I
considered laughably bad, was the highest-grossing film of all time. Peter
Jackson’s King Kong, which was just
as silly, made $550 million and was one of the top five films of 2005.

Speaking of Jackson, I had intended to see The Hobbit but was put off after
watching bits of his overblown trilogy The Lord
of the Rings on television during the Christmas-New Year period. I
don’t think I can bring myself to sit through another in the same mould.

Jackson is a clever man who has done great things for the
New Zealand film industry, but his films are simply noisy spectacles – all
sound and fury, signifying nothing, to quote Shakespeare. But clearly that’s
what appeals to modern cinema audiences, judging by the list of the all-time top 20 box office
earners.

Movie fans don’t want believable, human stories and nuanced
characters; they demand action, noise, fantasy and special effects by the truckload.
And directors oblige, making films that not only insult the intelligence but
are overlong and undisciplined because the directors can’t bring themselves to
leave anything out.

The best two films I saw in 2012 were the American black
comedy Bernie, starring Jack Black
(which surprised me, because I’d never been a fan of his), and a German Cold
War-era drama entitled Barbara, featuring
a very good actress you’ve never heard of.

Both were low-budget, character-driven stories that used no
special effects and didn’t bombard their audiences with cringe-inducing noise.
Both were immensely satisfying and needless to say, went virtually unnoticed.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

THERE ARE some people you’re just not supposed to criticise.
The sainted Sir David Attenborough, who has just celebrated 60 years making
wildlife documentaries, is one.

We have grown up with Attenborough. My children and I were
captivated by his landmark series Life on
Earth 30 years ago. There has probably never been a better natural history
programme.

His documentaries continue to set standards for their breathtaking
photography and inspired use of music.

Yet I’m over Attenborough. I started to have my doubts at
the time of his Frozen Planet series
in 2011, when scenes showing a polar bear and her newborn cubs, purportedly
filmed in the Arctic wild, were revealed as having been shot in a European zoo
using fake snow.

Attenborough’s defence of the deception – namely, that it
would have ruined the effect to say, “Oh, by the way, this was shot in a zoo” –
said a lot about his attitude toward keeping faith with viewers.

Since then I have watched him more critically. I believe
Attenborough, for all the good he has done, has become very adept at
manipulating viewers’ emotions.

He consistently anthropomorphises the creatures he’s filming
– in other words, encourages us to think of them as behaving and feeling like
humans. This ramps up the emotional impact of the programmes, because who can’t
feel teary at the sight of a forlorn-looking polar bear apparently adrift on an
ice floe?

This is a technique originally perfected by Walt Disney and
used with great success by production companies like Pixar, but we expect more
of BBC wildlife programmes.

I have also found myself questioning Attenborough’s honesty.
It strains credulity when he purports to single out one juvenile wildebeest
from several thousand, as he did recently, and follow its struggle for
survival. It seems far more likely that his crew filmed several young
wildebeest in life-threatening situations and then presented it as the story of
one individual heroically prevailing against the odds. Disney would have been
impressed.

It makes gripping television, but I just don’t buy it. * * *

EVERYONE I know seems to have a story about the frustrations
of dealing with council bureaucracies.

Try to build a simple garage to keep your car out of the weather,
and you’re bombarded with engineering requirements more appropriate to the
construction of a nuclear reactor.

Apply for consent to build a standard house – which these
days requires submitting hundreds of pages of documents – and you can expect to
wait the full 20 working days allowed before getting a response, only then to
be told that you’ve overlooked some minor technical detail and will have to put
your builder off until it’s been rectified.

Seek permission to launch a modest coffee trailer to cater
to passers-by on a popular walkway, and prepare yourself to be treated as if
you’re proposing an aluminium smelter in a national park.

On no account, in any of the above circumstances, should you
expect constructive advice as to how you might overcome the obstacles in your
path. Council functionaries exist to tell you what you can’t do, not to make
helpful suggestions.

My own council has been co-operative in my very limited
dealings with it, but I know plenty of people who tear their hair out with
chagrin at having to jump through endless regulatory hoops.

Politicians must hear such complaints all the time, yet seem
either powerless or unwilling to act. Councillors must get an earful too, but the
rule-bound bureaucrats always prevail. That’s where the real power resides.

The standard explanation, of course, is that catastrophes
such as leaky buildings and slipshod construction standards exposed by the Christchurch
earthquakes have forced councils to be more diligent. The exquisite irony is
that these were the results of councils’ own failings, yet the hapless citizen ends
up carrying the can.

* * *

A RECURRING lament in 2012 was that New Zealand has an
intolerable level of poverty. Kids go to school hungry, families live in
sub-standard accommodation, benefits are inadequate and wages are not high
enough to provide a satisfactory standard of living.

People are right to be concerned about cold, damp homes and
children who lack adequate food and clothing. No one benefits from such deprivation.

But what’s striking is that the lobby groups demanding
government action seem to think the problems of poverty can be eliminated at a
stroke by increasing welfare payments, providing children with free medical
care and meals in schools, raising the minimum wage and building more rental
housing.Just like that.

Like the Greens with their money-printing plans, they
propose seductively simplistic solutions for very complex problems.

Friday, January 4, 2013

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, January 2.)

In the week before Christmas I was invited to take part in a
radio programme where we were to discuss, among other things, the good and bad
of 2012.

Worryingly, I had to scratch my head to think of anything
that had happened in 2012. I put this down to my many years as a daily
newspaper journalist, a career which revolves around the event of the moment. Once a story has been written and published, it’s expunged
from the memory bank to make room for the next one.

It follows that casting one’s mind back over an entire year
was a tall order. But I duly went back through my files and slowly, little by
little, it all came back to me.

Here, then, is my highly selective resume of 2012.

It was a year in which, bizarrely, a large and
buffoonish-looking German named Kim Dotcom became a national celebrity and
caused enormous political embarrassment.

Buffoonish-looking he may be, but Herr Dotcom is a very
shrewd customer with a natural flair for public relations. He cleverly turned
the controversy arising from an over-the-top police raid on his home near
Auckland to his advantage, in the process becoming something of a folk
hero.

Public support for Herr Dotcom (even his adopted name sounds
like something created by a Hollywood scriptwriter) arose largely from the
perception, not entirely unjustified, that America, determined to put him on
the mat for alleged copyright infringement on a massive scale, had told the New
Zealand government to jump and the response had been, “how high”?

Public unease at this perceived grovelling to the Americans
would have been accentuated by controversy over the government’s sweetheart deal
with the Sky City casino company and, going back further, to the furore over The Hobbit, which saw prime minister John
Key swiftly moving to placate Warner Brothers to ensure production remained in
New Zealand.

In each of these instances, the government’s opponents were
able to portray the National Party as a pushover, ready to sell New Zealand’s
soul.

There was a time, decades ago, when many New Zealanders
accepted that we had no choice but to bow to powerful outside interests
(usually British, in those days), but all that has changed. Since Britain
abandoned us for the EU and we fell out with the Americans over Anzus, we have
acquired a taste for asserting our autonomy.

The problem is that we are a small, vulnerable economy,
often at the mercy of external forces. The government must seize what
opportunities it can without appearing to compromise our sovereignty. Getting
that balance right will present a continuing challenge for the government’s
political management skills, which looked distinctly ragged in 2012.

It was a year in which Mr Key seemed to forget the words of
the magic incantation that protected him against political damage during his
first term, but whether he has learned anything is a moot point. His final act
of the political year was to indulge in juvenile clowning on a radio station –
not a good look when the education sector was in turmoil.

Herr Dotcom’s other significant achievement was that he
effectively destroyed the Act party, although not without a great deal of help
from the pathetic John Banks and the man who unwisely installed him in Epsom, erstwhile
Act leader Don Brash.

Mr Banks had been happy to accept Herr Dotcom’s generous
help when he ran unsuccessfully for the Auckland mayoralty, but ungraciously
disowned the German the moment he looked like becoming a political
embarrassment. Herr Dotcom took his revenge by publicly exposing Mr Banks’
duplicity, and fair enough. Now Mr Banks’ reputation is in tatters and so is
Act’s. (In fact the more I think about it, the more I'm forced to conclude that, given Mr Key's radio antics and Mr Banks' embarrassing attempts to wriggle out of his predicament, buffoonery may have been the defining quality of 2012.)

Many people will rejoice at the prospect of Act being
obliterated at the 2014 general election, but I’m not one of them. It was a
bold, radical and idealistic party – as idealistic as any party on the left –
but like many idealistic parties, it suffered from a surfeit of talented but
idiosyncratic and often undisciplined personalities. Dr Brash’s ill-conceived takeover of the party
sealed its fate.

But back to 2012. There was ACC and the Bronwyn Pullar
fiasco, which claimed more victims than a cluster bomb. Yet I still refuse to
buy Ms Pullar’s portrayal of herself (with a huge amount of help from TV3’s disgracefully
partisan Sixty Minutes) as an heroic
whistle blower. It’s my opinion she was driven from the start by pure, undiluted self-interest
and adopted the mantle of crusader only after her attempt to exploit her
highly-placed connections failed.

There was a sensational murder trial that resulted in an
equally sensational acquittal. Ewen Macdonald, who was accused of murdering
Scott Guy, shows every sign of becoming another cause celebre in the tradition
of Arthur Allan Thomas, David Bain, David Tamihere and Scott Watson, with the
obvious difference that those cases resulted in convictions whereas Macdonald
will walk free. It’s as if New Zealand has developed a craving for murder cases
that fail to produce, at least in the public mind, a satisfactory and
definitive conclusion.

There was The Hobbit:
all two hours and 50 minutes of it, and there are still (spare us!) two films
to go. Sir Peter Jackson is the new Ed Hillary. Whatever one thinks of his
films, he has done more than anyone since Hillary to put the country on the
world map and make New Zealanders feel good about themselves. Even the late Sir
Peter Blake was never this big.

There was an unholy mess in education – the result of an
inexperienced but headstrong minister pushing too hard? – and mounting unease
about child poverty and income disparity, with no shortage of suggested
solutions (increased welfare payments, a higher minimum wage, meals in schools,
more cheap rental housing) but a conspicuous failure to explain how a
struggling economy could afford them.

There was noisy agitation for alcohol law reform and same-sex
marriage. Parliament emphatically rebuffed campaigners on the first issue – not
that that will silence the taxpayer-funded wowser lobby for long – but it
remains to be seen how much traction the marriage reformers will get.

And then there’s potentially the most troubling and divisive
issue of all: race, biculturalism and the Treaty. Of all the issues that
bubbled away in 2012, this is the one most likely to change the face of New
Zealand fundamentally and permanently. And it’s one on which the political
consensus in Parliament seems entirely out of step with the mood of the
electorate.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

I recently had an exchange here with New Zealand Herald senior journalist Peter Calder. It began with
him challenging my statement that Auckland University academic Elizabeth Rata
was Maori, but soon degenerated into a catty tit-for-tat exchange (the tone of which
I accept some responsibility for) that probably no one other than the two
participants bothered to persevere with.

To recap, I had drawn attention to a noteworthy piece Rata wrote
for the Herald warning of the dangers
of “co-governance” with iwi, a Treaty “partnership” model that Rata points out
subverts the basic principles of democracy. Calder made no direct comment on
Rata’s piece (though his opinion subsequently became very clear in the course
of our exchange) but took exception to my statement that Rata was “one of very
few Maori” with the courage to speak out against the concept of biculturalism.

That specific issue – whether Rata was Maori – remains unresolved.
Calder wanted me to say she wasn’t, and claimed some personal knowledge because
his wife is a university colleague of Rata. All I was prepared to do was accept
that I couldn’t prove she was Maori, just as I suspect Calder can’t prove she isn’t.
I find it interesting that after having said that Rata made a point of not
disclosing her ethnicity, he stated categorically that I was wrong in saying
she was Maori. Thus, having lectured me for being sloppy in asserting she was
Maori, he appears to have committed the same error in reverse.

So I conceded that Rata might not be Maori, though equally she
might be. Having spent time with her at a symposium years ago, I have no more
reason to doubt her Maoriness than I do the many pale-skinned Treaty activists
with European names who choose to assert their Maori ancestry over their
European bloodlines, for reasons only they can explain. But ultimately, as Rata
would undoubtedly argue herself, her racial background is irrelevant. I described
her as Maori because I thought it a point of interest, but it’s incidental to
the issue. What matters is the force of her arguments. And here’s where it gets
interesting.

Having answered Calder’s question in the only way I could –
namely, by acknowledging that I couldn’t confirm Rata was Maori – I put some
questions to him. I asked him to admit that what really riled him was that Rata
had the temerity to attack the wearyingly predictable (to pinch a phrase that
Calder applied to my own “reactionary drivel”) orthodoxy of the left on Treaty
issues; and what’s more, that his own paper had given her a platform. No
answer. Missing in action.

I asked these questions because Calder has previous form. In
an online journalists’ forum a few weeks ago, he sided with several non-entities
who had argued that the media gave far too much coverage to people like Sensible
Sentencing Trust man Garth McVicar, welfare watchdog Lindsay Mitchell and University
of Canterbury law academic David Round (who, like Rata, is a trenchant critic
of the Treaty grievance industry). Calder wrote then that he was proud to be in
the same business (journalism) as two contributors to that online discussion
who had attacked me for defending the right of people such McVicar, Mitchell
and Round to be heard in the media.

As I remarked then, I found it ironic that people who
considered themselves journalists were arguing that certain views should be
suppressed just because they didn’t agree with them – a view that would have
found favour with totalitarian regimes, of both the left and right, down
through history. Intriguingly, that exchange was touched off by an editorial in
the Herald that said we should
disregard the views of “enthusiastic amateurs” campaigning on issues such as
climate change and heed only the voices of experts. I understand Calder’s duties
at the Herald include writing
editorials, and it’s dollars to doughnuts that this was one of his. Do you see
a pattern here?

As I say, Calder didn’t respond to my questions – he was
interested only in trying to discredit me for asserting that Rata was Maori –
so I put them again. I asked him to confirm that his preoccupation with this
ultimately irrelevant issue was just a smokescreen, and that what really pissed
him off was that the Herald provided a platform for an opinion that he couldn’t
stomach. I went on: “You made it clear, by your recent support in another forum
for two noxious fleas who argued that people such as Garth McVicar, Lindsay
Mitchell and David Round should be ignored by the media, that you think any
opinions that don’t conform to your own left-wing world-view should be
suppressed, although how you reconcile that with your position as a senior
journalist employed by a mainstream newspaper is a bit of a mystery. So why don’t
you just give up the contrived indignation and declare honestly that you think people
like Dr Rata should be silenced?”

Now I would have thought these were quite serious claims to
raise against a journalist, but I’m still waiting for a response. Calder has gone
to ground. He’s more interested in trying to discredit my post on Rata on the
ground that she’s not Maori (although I challenge him to prove that, just as he
challenged me to prove that she is). Presumably he thinks she dishonestly assumes
a spurious credibility because she happens to have a Maori surname.

I don’t think I’ve ever met Peter Calder, but I feel I know
him. He reveals a lot about himself by what he writes.

He’s something of a bon vivant. He reviews expensive
restaurants in the Herald and recently
enjoyed Stonyridge Larose ($45 a glass) during two days of wining and dining on
Waiheke Island. In these hedonistic endeavours he is accompanied by someone he
cutely refers to as “The Professor”, whom I assume to be his wife. I sometimes
find his writing style pompous, but then he might well say the same thing about
me.

He also writes film reviews, and like many film critics he
grabs whatever opportunity he can to make a political point (for example, using
a review of a documentary about Donald Trump to have a shot at the New Zealand
government, which he says is “keen to bend the rules for rich foreigners”).

So he enjoys the good life. BUT (and this is a very important
but), he also has a social conscience.
He’s a champion of the poor and downtrodden, which must make him feel better
every time he tucks in his bib at an exclusive restaurant or accepts a freebie
from an airline or overseas hotel. He tugs at readers’ heartstrings with stories about
the queues at the Auckland City Mission, the “hardscrabble” Housing New Zealand
tenants heartlessly being “booted out” of their homes at Glen Innes (the bits about
the government building new houses and the displaced tenants being offered accommodation
elsewhere must have been edited out) and the heroic attempts being
made, in the face of government indifference, to save the Maori language.

He gives himself away with telltale moralising (in this case,
dropped into an admiring article about a 1960s-style collective) about “modern
life having prized ruthless individuality over and above the greater good for a
generation now” – a clear reference to Rogernomics, which 1970s-era lefties like
Calder tend to view in much the same way as fundamentalist Christians regard Adam
and Eve’s Fall from Grace in the Garden of Eden.

In other words Calder is almost the perfect embodiment of what
has become known as the chardonnay socialist. There’s no shortage of them in
journalism, which needn’t be a problem, just as long as they don’t fall prey to
the conceit that they have a monopoly on virtue. That can easily morph into a
conviction that anyone holding contrary views must have dodgy motives (greed,
indifference, malice, racism, whatever) and should therefore be ignored, if not
suppressed.

There are several things that intrigue me about chardonnay
socialists. One is that they insist the government eliminate poverty but never bother
themselves with the vexing question of where the money will come from. Another is that they are quick to condemn the wickedness of
capitalism but never pause to wonder which economic system enables them to eat
and drink in fine restaurants, live in tastefully restored Grey Lynn villas,
accept free overseas trips and drive cute, environmentally responsible European
cars.

But I digress. To get back to Calder, I’d be interested in
his answers to the following simple questions: does he accept that Elizabeth
Rata has a legitimate point of view on biculturalism and the Treaty, and does
he agree that the Herald is doing
what a good newspaper should do by giving Rata – along with people of contrary opinions
– a platform? Yes or no will suffice.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.